


Compassion in a World So Cold

by navaan



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Backstory, Book/Movie 2: Catching Fire, Character Study, Gen, Out of Sequence, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-09
Updated: 2015-07-09
Packaged: 2018-04-08 11:45:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4303683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/navaan/pseuds/navaan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Snippets from the life of Cinna</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compassion in a World So Cold

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kerithwyn](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kerithwyn/gifts).



The girl volunteers. It has never happened before. Not in 12. 

Her anguished scream echos over the crowd, not so much a volunteering of a girl ready to stand her ground and win as the desperate move of someone who can’t take what is happening, because they already lost too much. It's brave. So much braver than any career stepping up as tribute.

The name reveals the whole story.

It’s her fair haired, little sister, who was supposed to go to the slaughter. Katniss Everdeen will not let her sister die. Because for kids from 12 that’s what being reaped means. There’s only one boy who ever survived the Games who came from this district.

It makes her sacrifice, the offering, more tragic, more powerful. His heart goes out to her, brave, brave girl from the District nobody bets on.

Cinna knows this moment is important. It's inspiring. The bravery of a sister, to save one of the little ones who never stand a chance. He wants her to have a chance too.

And he hopes he can help with that.

That's why he has chosen to be a stylist, to help even the odds in the favor of those who are never favored.

* * *

He has watched the Hunger Games all his life. Like everyone he has his favorite victors, is sad occasionally when one of his favorites dies before the end. He and his friends reenact some of the mos dramatic parts, brandishing fake swords and wooden sticks and running around each other screaming.

Their parents smile.

It's all good. They will never go to the real games, but they will always remember what's important. Only the districts have to pay tribute. They have to be reminded of what they did.

Still, he cries when the little girl from 11 dies that year and he's inconsolable. His sister is a girl like that – more beautiful, more healthy, but with the same girlish dimples. At least that’s what the little girl was like in her interview. The games took it out of her before the end.

And now she's gone.

“You're so precious, Cinna,” his mother says, but doesn't understand why this is so important to him. It's okay, because he doesn't often understand her either. It's part of who they are. He just loves her anyway, like all children love their mothers, with unquestioning devotion. “So sensitive! You'll go far! Gaius always says the sensitive ones are the ones to look out for.” She pats his head affectionately and hugs him close as if he's done something brave and outstanding.

Perhaps he has.

* * *

When he and Portia step up to become the stylists for District 12 that year friends and customers are surprised. “How good are your chances of making a break with that? District 12 is hardly the district to leave an impression with.”

“It's a start,” Portia says mildly. They've been working together in their studio for close to six years. This is what they've decided together. He's going to be the stylist for the District 12 girl and she will do the same for the boy.

“It's easy to make shine what people already expect to shine.” Cinna smiles and helps the lady into her new dress. She forgets all about 12 when she sees herself in the mirror, dazzling in overdone unnatural beauty. It's not Cinna's favorite dress. He prefers to make the natural beauty shine that comes from places that decay in the Capitol.

Portia smiles at him and there's something sad about it.

None of them know now that the anguished reaction of a panicked sister will give them more to work with than they could ever have hoped for. Nobody knows yet that a girl will soon set the world on fire.

* * *

The first victor he meets in person is Vax. She says she’s working as a dressmaker when she’s not “here to look pretty and dangerous” at Capitol parties. Her smile is fascinating, but he doesn’t know if it’s because she smiles at all these men and women here as if they are beasts or because there is an underlying sadness there that draws him in.

They meet quite frequently and she politely asks him about his work and how many of the outrageous creations at the event might be his. Cinna is still young and only few know his name. His creations do not make it to events like this.

“One day they might,” Vax whispers. “And I hope they will be tasteful and elegant and not like the atrocities I’m seeing.”

He doesn’t dare ask about what people are wearing in her district. He’s seen some of the pictures. None of that would be conceivable in the Capitol. “Well,” she says, as if she has heard the unasked question, “out in the districts we know much ugliness. True beauty does not need this kind of exaggeration.” She takes a sip of her wine and shakes her head. “I didn’t say that, Cinna. I must be dunk.”

But the words stick in his mind.

He remembers that she gruesomely killed a Career with an ax, cleaving his head open. He has seen the reruns of her kills. He’s seen the panic, the animalistic will to survive. And yet, here she is like a slightly haunted beauty, talking to him of dresses and beauty and the reality of ugliness.

Nothing has ever seemed that real to him before. 

She's not a killer, she's not a Victor, not a thing to be gawked at. She's another little girl who might have lost her life if she hadn't fought back tooth and nails. She understands ugliness. She can still see beauty.

* * *

The girl who survived the Hunger Games because she loved too much is to be sent right into them again.

Peeta exudes anger and sadness. He doesn't have to play the lover who has nothing left to lose if they go back into the games. It's real for him. More real than anything has ever been on the Hunger Games stage maybe.

Death and violence everyone is used to. Love – love is new. And it's the spark that will set the world ablaze.

He'll prepare a wedding dress for Katniss that nobody will ever forget.

She's a symbol already. Let it be broadcast by the oppressors to the oppressed. Snow wants her to be a tragic icon, the girl who used love to win has to be destroyed with it, too. Cinna knows he can make her a symbol of hope.

His brave, brave girl has given him hope, she has inspired him to be daring.

* * *

The first time he meets Haymitch Abernathy there is no real meting at all. He slips away from the client he's accompanying to have a few quiet moments for himself and the man lies drunk on a sofa.

People let a lot of inappropriate behavior slide for a harmless drunk like Haymitch.

The second time he sees him at a function the man is whispering with old lady Mags from District 4: “They’ll break him before he’s even old enough to drink.”

They are talking about her Victor, Finnick Odair, who is the glowing heart of the party, good-looking and young and fresh and slightly roguish. He looks delicate in his half naked attire. Just a beautiful boy of 14. But there is hidden steel in his eyes and something that looks much like the disdain he’d shown some of the kids he’d killed in the games.

“He alone?” Haymitch asks and Mags nods.

“Let’s hope for him it stays that way. They won’t have anyone to use against him then. Will be hard enough as it is.”

Cinna knows the world is a harsh place, even in the Capitol, where you can have everything, but where jealousy and the hunger for power and beauty, for possessions, drive everyone. He has never forgotten his mother’s body covered in blood and the poison that had been responsible.

The first time he shakes Haymitch’s hand the man is more focused than he’s ever seen him before. They are both ready to do what it takes to give 12 a chance, to give Katniss Everdeen what she needs to come out of this alive.

* * *

Portia’s brother is with them as they watch the games. It’s the first time he’s watching the games with anyone in years and he doesn’t bother to hide his disdain as the slaughter starts when the games finally begin. The 12 year old from 7 is dead before he can even take a step to run away.

He hates it.

“I hate how they always go for the 12 kids first,” Portia says. “They never get a fighting chance.”

“They should,” Cinna mutters, and then realizes that nobody is talking. They are all carefully watching each other gauging their reactions.

“They should,” Lucius mutters and that’s all that needs to be said.

This is how he learns of District 13. This world is broken, more broken than he ever knew. Poisoned by lies.

* * *

The designs for the wedding dress is all set, but he makes alterations, plays around with the fabric. Snow wants her to be seen in the dress the Capitol viewers have chosen for her, playing up the tragedy and mocking her.

Cinna wants more for Katniss.

Unbelievably he feels nothing but love for this girl, who showed the world what true bravery means, feels nothing but hope now that he is sending his Mockingjay into the danger without her knowing anything about the secret plans set in motion. She'll survive. And she won't burn, but shine.


End file.
